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Our Words Are Our Prayers

Sacred land that had
previously been protected was “swapped” by Arizona State Senators earlier this
year. The land including and around Oak Flat campground, part of the Tonto
National Forest, was given to Resolution Copper (an Australian and British mining
company) by Arizona State Senators who covertly attached the resolution as a
rider to the national defense spending bill in December 2014. This land was “swapped”
for privately held land Resolution Copper had bought up in anticipation of this
action. In the past, unable to pass a resolution to allow mining at Oak Flat by
Congressional vote, AZ Senators went around the voices of the people who live there
and by-passed the process altogether. With their voices taken away and betrayed
yet again by the federal government, tribal members, community activists and
religious leaders have committed to occupy the Oak Flat campground which sits
on part of this sacred land and resist the copper mining company.

In my dreams, I am sliding backwards on this road. This road
that weaves between stacked red rocks careening out of a rich desert floor. In
my dreams, this road is steep, steeper than it is in real life. I know I must
have driven down this road many times as a child, yet, the only recollection I
have of being in this place is in my dreams.

I am driving to Oak Flat. I’m going to support the
relationship between people and place. This is one of those journeys I take
because my heart leads me there.

Oak trees growing out of rolling tan colored soil

Desert Oak trees emerge out of desert soil, gaining
nourishment from the water that flows down from the mountains which surround
this place. A water flow that will be forever changed if mining companies come
in to snatch out tons of earth below our feet. All for a deposit of copper that
lies beneath the surface of this once protected land.

The people in relationship with this land, the San Carlos
Apache tribe and other tribes in the area, who use it for spiritual purposes, who
live in relationship with this place, are pushing back. They are occupying Oak
Flat in protest.

I am sitting in the Oak Flat campground listening to
speakers share essential wisdom about the sacredness of the area. Speakers talk
about the beauty and importance of this place. Not in how it is used, but in
how we are in relationship with it.

Stone mountain ridge

All of earth is sacred land, one speaker reminds us. She shares what her father told her, that
there is a relationship between the earth and the moon. It is the minerals within
the earth which keeps this relationship alive, the cycles continuing.

Another speaker talks of why we value nature. We value
nature not because it is “traditional”, or for some higher spiritual purpose,
but because it is real. Our relationship with nature is as real as it gets. As
a surface dweller it is the realist of realities.

Sign - Save Oak Flat Our Land

We are grieving this violation to nature, to us, through
music and spiritual expression in community. We are celebrating resistance to a
procedure that went around the voices of the people who live here. “Our words
are our prayers,” the woman says as she closes the circle of sharing.

Evening comes and the air grows cold. On the way home, we
drive through Florence. I look out at rows of concrete buildings, massive
entities swaddled in fences, guard towers and barbed wire. These massive
prisons remind me that our society does understand the power of relationship.
In the name of punishment, we break the relationships people have with those
they love, we control the relationship of people to nature and to themselves.
It is part of what makes prison so cruel.

It’s the next morning and I am sitting here trying to write
about a fight for justice, for this land that I too love. For those of us who
live in the city, it is hard sometimes to remember the value in being with
nature. I look at the ways that I participate in plucking things from mother earth
with my consumerism. I wonder about the people’s relationship to the land from
which my stuff comes from. It is a good
reminder, as many elders tell us, to live simply, so that others can simply
live.

Relationship is complicated, it is messy, and we each embody
the unresolved silence of our reality as surface dwellers in conflict with
nature as something we use. But this silence doesn’t need to break us. Our
words are our prayers.

Author's face in sun and shadow

Oak Flat is a place where I am allowed to be who I am, where
I am. It is about listening to a land which gives so many gifts of wisdom and
learning. I support the resistance because I am a surface dweller and this is
my reality.

About Me

Naomi Ortiz is a writer, poet and visual artist who cracks apart common beliefs and spills out beauty. As a disabled Mestiza living in the U.S./Mexico borderlands, Naomi supports individuals to build bridges through facilitated discussion, art, poetry and reflection, connecting them to their own truths around self-care and living in multiple worlds. Naomi provides individual consultations and is a nationally known speaker and trainer on self-care for activists, disability justice, and intersectionality. Her upcoming book, "Sustaining Spirit: Self Care for Social Justice" invites and supports readers to explore the relationships between mind, body, spirit, heart and place in order to integrate self-care to survive and thrive. "Sustaining Spirit: Self Care for Social Justice" will be released in 2017.